L'Hiver Approche
by CaideSin
Summary: Avec des millions d'êtres humains. Chérie, l'hiver va être tough c't'année. [Organization XIII and the Disney Princesses]


Roxas smiles faintly into the sunlight. "There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

Snow White sings for him, her throat vibrating, vocal chords contracting and expanding like the clutch of a heart.

"I know you," Aurora echoes softly.

Roxas snaps and snarls, "There is no me to know."

And the wind unfurls beneath his wrists and elbows as he runs.

**_

summerish vibes

_**

Marluxia wakes up sweating and gasping, body too hot, flesh singing capillary arias to the rush of sunlight wrapping around his legs.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

He gags down a glass of wine and paces the lush confines of his greenhouse, letting the overpowering scent of earth ground him. He paces, his reflection appearing in brief splashes in the steamed windows.

"You called?" Lexaeus's voice rises up from the dirt and Marluxia stills.

"When I call, you come," His body trembles with desire and fury and his voice crackles like dried leaves. The bellicose rise of ammonia he senses makes his eyes water and his breath stutter, but Lexaeus comes, his form sifting up through the dirt and leaves.

He smells of sunlight and of sand, his hands are dry across Marluxia's brittle wrist. "You called?" he repeats in his voice of earthquakes.

Marluxia's fingers—soft as petals, sharp as thorns—drag the exposed jut of his collarbones, the ligaments of his neck, the angled bone of his jaw, finally tangling themselves deep in the brambles of his hair.

Lexaeus is reserved and put upon, "You may play these games with _your_ subordinates—"

"You are one of my subordinates," Marluxia breaths, the sneering scent of roses cloying, "and I need you now."

He is safely rooted in the Earth, he hopes, as the sun scorches him.  
_  
_

**_

november nights

_**

He can taste it on his tongue as he breaths. He can feel it on his skin as he flies.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

No, Xaldin thinks viciously, we are the cold eyes, we are the glittering gangs, we are the beast.

The enigmatic sadness in Belle's eyes does not change. She knows the song, she sings it well and it hangs hauntingly in the arches of the castle.

"I know you," Aurora's voice invades in, disembodied, textured, and floating.

No, Xaldin tells himself as the sky consumes him. No.

**_

september love

_**

He is breath of fresh air, of spring rain, of rebirth; new beginnings. He is the sea air, he is salt and sand and the sands part before him like the sea. It's never too dry for him, he is the well, he is the font of all things, of life, of song, and all things return to him.

The song plucked from his lips is not his own. It is as insubstantial as the breeze and it slips through his grasp. The sea green jewel settled across Jasmine's brow twinkles in the starlight and the desert wind, which stirs her hair, is playful.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

Demyx feels his body surging, white capping into resentment and confusion.

The song that echoes up out of the dunes does not belong to him either. It is a woman's song and he reels against its warm vitality, its evanescent understanding—the understanding slips through his fingers.

"I know you."

"Nobody knows," Demyx forces out of his suddenly dry throat.  
_  
_

**_

april's bonfire

_**

He waits in the spaces between, molding the temporal, inconveniencing the truth. He is more powerful than _them_, than Nature herself.

He walks the cracks between reality and dream, beyond the halls of shadow. There is a sharp shift in perception, but it does not knock him off balance, even as his polygon of relative meaning warps and twists beneath the steadiness of his feet. He is old, he is practiced, and he has always been adept.

The crows come screaming out of a pocket of fantasy.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

He watches intently as they wheel through the skies of possibility. Each calculated flap of their wings conveys their message in the voice of beasts and numbers.

And she passes him as the magic fades, slowly easing the tension on veracity, returning it to its former state of precarious balance.

Her song is like shattering glass and whispering skirts. Her bare feet and rag clothing bespeak neither, but he listens as she nears the border, fading, shimmering, mirage-like. She is with him in the in-between for only a second, and then she is gone.

Xigbar looks within himself, an observation as relative as up or down. The sunrise is there, whispering that she knows him, reaching out to touch him with her twilit flesh.

He plays with his broken heartstrings and wonders.

**_

spring rain

_**

The song ravages her, forcing its way out of her chest, ringing across the ceiling in flash-bright scorches.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast," she screams, writhing.

A woman's song: a sad understanding with the innateness of a witch—Naminé's soft blue eyes are filled with tears.

"I know you," she sobs, her hands shaking.

She does not channel the power well, and so Larxene opens the floodgates. Lightning strikes: fissuring the ground, quaking the earth, breaking windows in a crystalline twinkling.

**_

harvest moon

_**

He is a stranger wandering the island of children.

He walks the length of the beach, admiring the small dank-smelling cove and the brightly colored shells. The sky is clouded above, full of ships and adventure.

The dead ones hide in the shadowy underbelly of the jungle and Xemnas finds them there. Their starving neglected bodies still animated through a vicious need to be. The boy with the broken neck cannot speak to him and the boy with beaten body cringes away. He can feel their mistrust, their hatred. He does not stay long enough for them to kill him, though the rules of the island say it is their due.

Xemnas wonders if the tribes of boys at the Treehouse know about the dark ones not so far away. He does not ask them, only observes the ferocious Indian girls as they hunt for their survival, singing in a language that was once his own, but he no longer remembers the nuances of.

The girl he finds at the cliffs of the sirens, the dangerous, sinisterly fascinating mermaids with their inviting arms and eerily enticing voices. They circle the waters below her feet hungrily, their shark's teeth exposed as they lick their lips.

The girl sings, challenging the sirens and the dark storm clouds above. "There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast," she sings in a woman's voice.

And the mermaids screech up to her, "I know you."

Xemnas studies them closely, listening to each chorus until the rain and the pirates finally descend from the sky in torrents of cannonballs and hail.

**_

october is eternal

_**

The blood comes with the moon and the forest is soft-spoken beneath the rush of his feet. He hears the wolfcries and the high tide of his heart burns brighter and he drops down to all fours and runs the way he was born to run.

The voice of the nearby mountains is strong, the cicadas rising in chirruping chorus and his breath moves in and out of him in panting gasps.

With the moon comes the blood and as he bursts into the willow clearing he smells it on her. He feels his hackles surging to attention; he stalks closer, drawn by the stench of her moon-time blood.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast." She chants it to all of the forest, calling every creature to sing beneath the moon.

"I know you," the animals call to him.

Saïx throws his head back and sings with them, embarking the air of affinity.

**_

oslo in the summertime

_**

He gambles with her often at the docks. She brings him treasures from the deep; he brings her mysteries of the land. Her luck at dice is uncanny and sometimes his smile feels old and cagey. When fate turns his way and she does lose, she sings sweet songs for her supper. He does not like to refuse her.

Luxord can just barely see the island from here, the sky is too dark for midday and he feels his pulse dance into his throat as she begins to sing, for what prize he does not know. He stares down at her, seawater dripping from her hair and eyelashes, her coral pink mouth strained across the sound.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

A voice climbs out from beneath the dock; perhaps it is the sea, or the flapping of her fins.

"I know you."

Snarling, he throws the jewels into the sea and watches her shocked expression, as she breaks free from the trance.

"There is nothing but the shore to know between the land and sea," he sneers.

**_

fall festival

_**

He breathes the reclusion of dragons, here in his lair of snow and ice. He is at home in the silence of the mountains; he is comforted by the blizzards, which rage across the peak. At night he can prowl the village pharmacist for the items he finds necessary for his work, and no one need ever know.

He can build his abominations in the peace of this cave. He is blissfully secluded… until the girl comes and he is forced to slink into the shadows of his own domain. The sword at her hip and her armor clank against one another deafeningly. She removes each piece of her heritage with a calligraphic care and sets them on the stone floor before the altar.

She has come to pray, Vexen thinks in mocking realization.

The incense smoke wafts slowly through the open air of the cave; her voice is a soft mumble of thanks and pleas.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast," she says, louder, clearer, her eyes turned upwards to meet the gaze of the cold granite idol.

The wind stirs. Her words resonate within him and he knows then that she is speaking to him.

"I know you," she prays sadly.

**_

winter wonderland

_**

He likes Wonderland. The world is as changing and volatile and as dangerous as fire. Its madness is kinship and comfort. His fractured nerves reverberate inside his spine and he dances wildly with the dodos and caterpillars. He gambles along with the stars that play with Laughing Sam's dice, he drowns himself in strange blends of tea with the Hatter & Hare.

She comes uninvited, but don't they all. She's certainly not interrupting, the plate of biscotti continues to circulate, the teapots continue to squeal and pipe. Oh, the games they play.

Axel suggests drolly that they should bring out the birthday cake already and friends Hatter & Hare clap wildly, stirring up mad flurries of butterflies.

Responsive, the music bridges uncontrollably, but the tune is not what Axel expects. Hatter & Hare stare at the teapots, rapping them with spoons to get them back on key, but the girl begins to croon in a dark voice that isn't her own.

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

Axel sits up straighter, recognizing that voice from a dream he doesn't remember having.

The girls eyes are glazed and that woman's song continues to pour forth from her lips.

"I know you."

Axel rushes from the garden; he knows where he is needed.

**_

january girl

_**

The Underworld has the most complete library in the entire universe. The words of the dead, Zexion has found, can be quite enlightening. The library is cold, the stone chair uncomfortable, the wails of the dead disconcerting, and the smell of rot pervasive, but Zexion remains committed and unaffected.

She smells of oils and orchids and her eyes flash like the betrayed and the betrayer both. She sits across from him and watches him arrogantly from behind the stone slab between them.

"Hades sent me," she explains when Zexion closes the musty volume. He meets her gaze apathetically, gauging his own interest in what Hades might have to say.

"Yes?" he inquires dully.

The woman gnaws at her lower lip and hesitantly opens her mouth to say, "There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

She pauses when Zexion's mask falls away and he takes in a sharp gasp of breath as the words strike him across the face; like cold winter sunlight.

"I know you," the woman says. She gazes at him uncertainly for a moment before she struggles to her feet and leaves.

**_

l'hiver approche

_**

"There is someone inside of me, someone with cold eyes and the glittering fangs of a beast."

Twilit Aurora stands with Snow White upon the cliffs of the End of the World, watching Roxas fly over the hyacinth falls to the rush of foam below.

The sun is balanced precariously on the horizon.

"I know you," Aurora sings.

Tears trickle down Snow White's cheeks, "Goodnight, Sweet Prince."

"I know you," Aurora intones again, more desperately.

Snow White closes her eyes and feels it, the ties to the magic and the moon and the strange truths they tell in their deceptive lights.

"You… you have all that which makes one human," she cries at last.

The spell is complete and they hear the faraway splash as Roxas sinks beneath the waves of oblivion—_Infinity_.

* * *

**Standard Disclaimers.**


End file.
